Is Exercise Making Us Fat?

Here's a novel idea if I've ever seen one. In a specific day care center. lots of kids were picked up late. So they owners got mad about this because, that meant that they had to stay over. So to try and curb late pick ups they started a late fee, where by if you were late you paid an extra fine.

To their surprise, it didn't work. In fact in this study (by Freakonomics) showed that the late fee actually resulted in more late pick ups. Now why would this be do you suppose? Because since people felt guilty already about picking their kids up late, the fee gave them the idea, that they could pay off their guilt. ya know "i'm sorry i'm late here's 10 buck." Not, "i can't be late i'll have to pay extra."

So now let's look at fatness in America. Take exercise. It is the same idea. People who are over wight and exercise, just get more over weight. Because they then think "hey i worked out today so now i can eat these fries." or "hey i really over ate, oh well i'll just exercise and then it will be better" and then the next day eat cake as a reward for their exercise.

Thus, the person feals guilty about eating to much and being over weight, and then exercises to pay off the guilt, but then takes the fact that they exercise as an excuse to eat more. And that cycle repeats over and over. In short, in a lot of way, exercise is making us fatter.